Unclean air is illegal.

As statistics show, air pollution in Iran is one of the main causes of premature deaths, and according to the Ministry of Health’s statistics, nearly 40,000 premature deaths occur annually due to air pollution in Iran. Based on these statistics, in Tehran alone, more than 4,000 citizens lose their lives prematurely due to excessive air pollution.

However, a notable point in the published statistics of air pollution fatalities, in addition to the permissible level of pollutants, is that the situation is getting worse every day and there is no sign of improvement in environmental conditions, especially in relation to air pollution. On the other hand, it does not seem that the current laws are effective enough to ensure the minimum rights of citizens to enjoy a healthy environment. This is while the Clean Air Act was passed with the aim of standardizing laws related to air pollution and protecting the right to clean air in Iran, and a review of its provisions shows that the points and standards included in this law are relatively up-to-date and advanced compared to the laws of other progressive countries.

However, the main question here is why, despite the approval and implementation of the Clean Air Act in Iran, which aimed to protect the right of citizens to breathe clean air, the air pollution situation in Iran has not only not improved, but also worsens every day.

The right of citizens to a healthy environment.

From the perspective of international laws, the enjoyment of clean air and what is recognized as the right to breathe clean and healthy air is a subset of environmental rights and is now considered part of human rights (third generation). The right to a healthy environment guarantees that all individuals have the right to access a healthy and balanced environment for personal and collective growth, where in addition to freedom and human dignity, a happy quality of life is also ensured. This includes access to various resources such as clean drinking water and clean air for breathing.

The right to the environment is mentioned and emphasized as a part of human rights in international documents and commitments. In this regard, the Stockholm Declaration, as the first international environmental document, explicitly refers to the right to the environment and introduces it as one of the “fundamental rights” for humans. This right is also explicitly identified in the Rio Declaration, the Charter of Nature, and especially the European Convention “Aarhus”, and efforts to uphold and ensure it are designated as the responsibilities of governments.

What is important in utilizing the right to the environment is the realization and provision of tools that facilitate the demand, monitoring, implementation, and guarantee of this right for citizens, and enable their participation in efforts to access a healthy environment. These tools are recognized in four subsidiary rights in international documents and commitments, titled the right to access environmental information, the right to education and learning about environmental issues, the right to participate in environmental activities and decision-making, and the right to access administrative and judicial authorities in environmental matters.

From this perspective, based on the right to access environmental information, all citizens should have free and unrestricted access to environmental information without any limitations or censorship, especially without fear of persecution or any other danger. This includes access to information about their place of residence, whether it is at a small scale, such as a neighborhood, or at a larger scale, such as a province or country. The key point in ensuring this right is that it is the responsibility of governments to provide the conditions for citizens to have free access to environmental information, and they are obligated to make this right accessible to all citizens.

The enjoyment of the right to a healthy environment also requires education and learning, and citizens need to know how to access a healthy environment and how to create and maintain it in order to benefit from their right. They should also educate their children in this regard. This goal cannot be achieved without the commitment of governments to create suitable conditions for ensuring this right.

It is clear that without the possibility of citizens’ free participation in environmental activities and decision-making processes, which is especially possible through group activities, the goal of benefiting from the right to a healthy environment will be a distant and inaccessible one. Therefore, according to this right, the general public should be able to play a role in the decision-making process on environmental issues through participation in environmental activities (such as establishing environmental associations and civil society organizations).

In the end, preserving the environment from destruction and damage requires the active and informed participation of governments, using the power of social enforcement (police and judicial system) to ensure access to a healthy environment for all citizens and prevent its destruction. This important task cannot be achieved without guaranteeing citizens’ right to access administrative and judicial authorities to address environmental issues. The right to seek justice in environmental matters essentially involves the use of law and the judicial system in creating and preserving a healthy environment and ensuring access for all citizens.

Based on this, it is clear that the right to access clean and healthy air is also one of the most fundamental components of the right to a healthy environment, supported by international documents and laws. Tools for utilizing the right to a healthy environment can also be used to access the right to clean breathing.

Clean Air Law in Iran

According to many environmental activists, especially lawyers, the environmental problem in Iran is not only the lack of protective and deterrent laws against pollution, but also the existence of conflicting laws in this area. These activists believe that the problem lies in the lack of enforcement of existing laws. Despite the fact that five years have passed since the adoption and implementation of the Clean Air Law in Iran, significant parts of this law have not been enforced for various reasons.

Behzad Ashjaei, the secretary of the technical committee for issuing environmental permits of the Environmental Protection Organization, in December 2020, with the confirmation of the non-implementation of the Clean Air Act in Iran, considered the implemented parts of this law to be only thirty percent. According to this official, despite three years passing since the enactment of the Clean Air Act, at that time, seventy percent of this law remained unimplemented.

However, the reasons for not implementing the Clean Air Act are different and mostly revolve around the challenge of financial resources. Isa Kalantari, the former head of Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization, had announced in February 2021 that the lack of necessary financial resources in the country was one of the main reasons for not implementing the law. However, a month earlier, he had revealed a more significant factor that seems to be the main reason for the law not being enforced. Kalantari had stated that the Clean Air Act is a good law, but it is not feasible to implement it in a third world country (Iran) and if fully enforced, it would cause a 70% shutdown of the country’s economy.

This means that at least seventy percent of industries and production units in Iran, along with the transportation industry and production of vehicles, have not complied with the regulations set in the Clean Air Act, and their pollution levels exceed the legal limit. However, in order to maintain the economy, citizens are sacrificing their right to a healthy environment and clean air.

The claim of non-enforcement of the Clean Air Act is not just a mere excuse for the authorities to escape responsibility, but in practice, there are numerous cases of important sections of this law not being enforced and being ignored by government institutions and agencies. Laws related to increasing public transportation capacity, especially the development of metro systems in major cities, replacing old vehicles, standardizing domestically produced vehicles, the need for compliance with legal and permissible levels of pollution emissions by industries and production units, and especially laws related to preventing polluting activities near residential areas, are all parts of the Clean Air Act that, despite their significant role in preventing pollution in the air, have not been implemented effectively.

The attitude of authorities in Iran, especially the leader of the Islamic Republic, towards industrial development is one of the other factors that has caused serious problems in implementing clean air laws in Iran. For example, the boundless enthusiasm of the leader of the Islamic Republic for domestic production has led many industrial factories and units to solely focus on “national production” without any economic benefits for the people, causing irreparable damage to the environment and depriving citizens of their right to a healthy environment. The transfer and displacement of water to supply the water needed for industries, which should ideally be built close to water sources, and the pollution of residential areas due to the construction of polluting production units nearby, are the results of the slogan and insistence on “national production”.

However, apart from the lack of enforcement of clean air laws, the way these laws are viewed and the lack of implementation of their main tools for citizens’ demands (the four mentioned rights) are among the reasons for the failure of clean air laws in Iran.

As an example, although access to environmental information and education on environmental issues is one of the main tools for demanding the right to a healthy environment, in Iran, access to this information is severely restricted and in some cases, there is no reliable source for providing information. Reports of turning off air quality monitors during the final days of the current year’s Ordibehesht (April/May) coinciding with a severe increase in air pollution in Tehran and several other major cities is just one example of this claim.

On the other hand, it is clear that without the active involvement of civil society organizations and institutions, it is essentially impossible to verify the information provided by government agencies, especially in terms of widespread environmental education. This is despite the fact that the security approach in Iran generally and specifically towards environmental institutions has made it extremely difficult for these institutions to operate freely.

In the field of group activities regarding environmental issues and participation in environmental decision-making, the right to this is significantly worse than other rights. Any form of group activity, especially if accompanied by protests, will face severe suppression despite the existing security measures.

Regarding access to administrative and judicial authorities for filing complaints about environmental issues, although the need for special courts for air pollution is explicitly mentioned in the Clean Air Act (Article 32), in practice these authorities do not have the necessary efficiency in handling environmental complaints, especially the right to clean air. This is because civil institutions are not recognized for their role in raising awareness, education, and participation in the fight against air pollution, and therefore these institutions cannot play a direct role in the process of environmental litigation. As a result, the Environmental Protection Organization, as the main supervisor of the implementation of the Clean Air Act, is the main actor in the process of environmental litigation. On the other hand, although air pollution can be considered a non-pardonable crime in Iran, the involvement of the judicial system in pursuing this crime requires a complaint from the plaintiff, and otherwise the judicial system will not take action even if it receives a report of a violation of the Clean Air Act.

Failure to enforce minimum clean air laws, prioritizing the interests of powerful economic institutions over the environmental interests of citizens, and especially the failure to recognize citizens’ right to demand their environmental rights has resulted in the demand for clean air in Iran being limited to only a few days when pollution in cities has reached such high levels that ignoring it becomes even more difficult. Apart from speaking about the right to a healthy environment or demanding it, it is a security measure that is met with severe backlash from security institutions.